“It’s bad advice to carry an umbrella inside,” Mariah Hayes was told by some of her elders as she carried photography equipment around as part of one of The Village Press’s current projects. Kelly Phillips got marriage advice from a proclaimed “crazy old lady.”

After school on Tuesday, February 26th, seniors Mariah Hayes, Kelly Phillips, Jessica Demarest, Paige Galloway Hammond and sophomore Kaitee Horstmann accompanied Mr. Swain and local author Mary Cuffe Perez to Maplewood Manor Nursing Home in Ballston Spa. They were there to photograph the residents Cuffe Perez has been interviewing and writing about since last August.

Cuffe Perez secured a 2013 Artist’s Grant from the the Saratoga Program for the Arts through the NYS Council on the Arts to faciltate this literary/oral history project. She began interviewing residents of the nursing home first, finding episodes of their lives she could re-tell in print, and then reached out to Mr. Swain this winter to offer the Village Press the opportunity to take the photographs to accompany her stories, design the cover and publish the book.

The residents range in age from 72 to 98. Lillian Bills Derby urged Cuffe Perez to pursue this project and she was the first one the crew visited that day. She grew up in Galway and was listening intently to local activities on a radio scanner before her photo shoot. The second resident photographed was Lorine Uitti. Her parents were from Yugoslavia and when they moved here, she taught herself English by visiting the Cleveland Library. Warren Foote is 95 and digitally savvy. After enduring multiple camera flashes, he asked the girls if he could see the pictures to check whether he was smiling in any of them.

“I feel like a star,” Miriam Patricia Breite (a.k.a. Pat) commented as Cuffe Perez issued Mr. Swain and the girls in to the room. Her room-mate Mary Parente (age 98) and she were photographed individually and side-by-side. They were certainly camera ready. Pat (age 89) was decked out in a pink outfit that went with her pink rose cane. Pat teased Mary about standing up straight and showing off her red sweater.

Mary came to the US when she was 5 from Naples. Pat expressed a love of reading when Cuffe Perez presented her with The Story Quilt, a book that Galway community members published a few years back.

Vincent Grannito is known to most as Jimmy. He had a collection of photos on his wall and directed the crew to check out the black and white canvas picture of his wife and him together. He is a Frank Sinatra fan. He met Frank Sinatra twice. He used to sing at the My Way Cafe on Rt. 9 and has been spotted by at least one Galway student singing karaoke at Maplewood.  Kaitee Horstmann shared, “I was visiting a relative here and I remember him because he was so happy.”

Pictures of residents Kathryn (Kate) Foster, Dominga Hoerauf and Jeannie Brooks will also be included in Mary Cuffe Perez”s book. Community members will hear their stories and be able to hear more about events in the lives of Lillian, Lorine, Warren, Pat, Mary and Jimmy when the book is circulated in early May. Readings will be held at Maplewood Manor, the Brookside Museum and other locations.